Mili Balakirev, "Islamey"

Perhaps one of the most difficult pieces written for piano, Islamey - Oriental Fantasy is a short work composed in 1869 by the Russian pianist and composer Mili Balakirev, leader of the famous group known as The Mighty Five, which emerged in Russia in the mid-19th century to form the Russian chapter of the nationalist movements that began to prevail in European music.

Balakirev, the guiding light
Although in terms of the projection of his music he was widely surpassed by almost all the other members (Musorgsky, Borodin, Rimski-Korsakov, with the exception of Cesar Cui, the theoretician), Mili Balakirev played in the group the role of the one who imposed the aesthetic and nationalistic guidelines, to the point that, in the beginning, his colleagues submitted their works to the supervision of the intuitive master, whose first academic steps he had taken in the branch of science.

Balakirev - Rimsky Kórsakov
Cui - Musorgsky - Borodin

Islamey, the idea
In 1862, a young Balakirev, 25 years old, undertook a long journey through the Caucasus and Crimean regions carrying out an exemplary collection of folk music. It was there where the idea for the composition of the exuberant and perfectly finished Islamey arose, which was originally intended to be part of a symphonic poem – Tamara – on which he was working at that time:

"...the majestic beauty of luxuriant nature there and the beauty of the inhabitants that harmonises with it – all these things together made a deep impression on me... Since I interested myself in the vocal music there, I made the acquaintance of a Circassian prince, who frequently came to me and played folk tunes on his instrument, that was something like a violin. One of them, called Islamey, a dance-tune, pleased me extraordinarily and with a view to the work I had in mind on Tamara I began to arrange it for the piano. The second theme was communicated to me in Moscow by an Armenian actor, who came from the Crimea and is, as he assured me, well known among the Crimean Tatars. (Letter to Eduard Reiss, 1892).

Legendary for its enormous technical difficulties, Islamey is a piece that can be tackled successfully by only a few of the great virtuosos. So much so that Maurice Ravel once remarked that his demanding piece Gaspard de la Nuit was composed for, among other purposes, trying to write something more difficult than Islamey. And Balakirev himself went so far as to confess that there were some fragments of the piece "that I have not been able to get to grips with". Despite everything, Balakirev composed the piece in the course of one month, in 1869.

The work
As already mentioned, it is based on two folkloric themes. The first is a fast, energetic dance with fast repeated notes – the one picked up on his trip to the Caucasus – which governs the entire first section of the piece – and part of the third. A middle section, at 2:01, introduces a romantic melody – the Crimean theme – which at 3:30 will acquire greater vivacity to take up again at 4:08 the initial theme, which then transformed into a frenetic dance will advance towards the closing in a dramatic fashion after a sort of coda at 5:47.

The rendition is by the outstanding Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky, who is also a jazz pianist, and by the way, only needs one hand, the left one, to play Chopin's Revolutionary Etude.